kschaefer wrote: Why should barons have to pay an additional blood to contest with a prince or archbishop?

Fee Stakes have a vote drawback (seriously wtf), do we need to screw over Barons that badly? Are they really that overpowered?

As far as I know there are two reasons for this:
1. Background fluff; Other sects are simply bigger than anarch and have more resources to throw around for contesting rulership of cities.
2. Balance: It's far easier gaining titles by doing simple +1 stealh Fee Stake action than +1 stealth political action and also win the vote for praxis or crusade.

Kushiel wrote: but this is always a poor reason for any rule in this game, because this game does a terribly sloppy job of trying to emulate the RPG.

Actually I think quite the opposite - VtES represents fluff much better that any edition of VTM. "Sloppy job" is in communicating how it's doing it, so even artists, for example, think that with torn signpost you should hit somebody.